ShoreTel deploys unified communications for Brimbank City Council

news ShoreTel, a California-based provider of phone systems and unified communications (UC) solutions, has announced it has deployed a unified communications solution for Brimbank City Council in Victoria.

In a statement, the firm said Brimbank City Council in Victoria has selected ShoreTel’s Connect Onsite UC platform to replace its current telephony and contact centre infrastructure. ShoreTel Connect, which the firm said is the biggest release in its history, is a new single UC platform that can be delivered as a product or as a service.

ShoreTel’s solution will form the basis of a “comprehensive revamp” of the council’s systems to enhance its delivery of services to its community of almost 200,000 residents.

Brimbank will deploy the ShoreTel Connect ONSITE platform, including its Contact Center and Mobility options across 29 locations, providing services for over 700 council staff.

The council aims to see a higher level of customer service responsiveness across the organisation by employing ShoreTel’s collaboration features, contact centre functionality and the extension of rich UC to mobile devices.

“Our council operations are spread across many sites so we are looking forward to using presence and instant messaging to more easily redirect calls and collaborate with our colleagues,” said Helen Morrissey, Brimbank’s Director of Corporate and Community Relations. “Our contact centre will also benefit from additional capabilities and integration with third-party applications to track calls and better understand customer trends.

“We have a strong focus on finding the best technology available to provide our community with excellent customer service. We will be looking for opportunities to integrate ShoreTel in a number of customer service projects we have planned, including a new website presence and the introduction of a new customer database.”

The roll out, a joint project between ShoreTel partner Flexnet and Brimbank’s IT department, is expected to be completed before March 2016.

According to the statement, Brimbank underwent a “rigorous” tender process for its new UC solution, and selected ShoreTel following a preview of the platform in beta mode. The council finally chose ShoreTel Connect for its ease of use, simplicity of the platform, user experience and functionality.

“ShoreTel’s desktop client and handsets will be really intuitive to use for our employees,” said Morrissey. “The concertina design of the ShoreTel Connect desktop client is an efficient use of screen space and the features are simple-to-use: we were really impressed. Given ShoreTel Connect was just released, it made sense to choose the new platform.”

Brimbank said it plans to move a number of sites to the new system each week, conducting training sessions in conjunction with Flexnet before deploying new phones and software to users soon after. The training will cover basic telephony features and also more advanced applications including instant messaging, conferencing and web sharing.

“The success of any UC solution is based on the user uptake of its rich collaboration features,” said Frédéric Gillant, VP and Managing Director of Asia Pacific, ShoreTel. “With ShoreTel Connect, we have focused our attention on the user interface by ensuring all the features available are intuitive, consistent and simple to use.”

“Our success at Brimbank is reflective of the groundswell of local councils that have selected ShoreTel in the recent past with more than 10,000 ends now managed in this vertical by ShoreTel partners in Australia,” he said.

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